Jose

          This was a home once. You can tell by the layout; the small bathroom on the first floor, the kitchen with the large island.   The wide open living and dining rooms. An office.  Family pictures on the mantel, memory markers much like grave stones. Over the years the family remodeled, added on, and are still – you can see the construction that they attempt to cover with tarps and large plastic signs advertising themselves.  Now it is a hotel. Stunning art on the walls. Arrow – shaped pool. Breakfast included. Ring a bell to get in. The son, Jose, and his young family work there every day, but there are other employees as well. Jose, who is the only male worker there save for the security guard that appears at night,speaks English fluently. He lived in the US for over 10 years. Went to school, came back, went to the US again, came back.

         This is access to an opportunity that so many have not had, and will never have.

         He is easy to like. Long, curly lashes, bright brown eyes. An easy smile framed with dimples, soft body. Generous disposition. He cares about you. He sees us at our most vulnerable. Ill, physically or mentally, taking time away from our homes and jobs for various reasons.  He’s been hosting for so long that he knows the routine better than we do.  He knows what to expect from guests and has made rules accordingly. Nobody in the pool after 7pm co-ed rooms only for married couples leave the key at the front desk.

       Whether people follow these rules is another story…

       He has two young children. I go to fill my water bottle with purified water from a jug in the kitchen; Managua water isn’t potable.  It’s getting late at this point, past 6pm, and a little girl is curled up in an armchair, fast asleep. She’s been there most of the afternoon. Her comfort is like the comfort of the smell of your father as he envelopes you in a hug. Or the easy, impossibly flattening stretch of a cat. The bowl-shaped satisfaction of waking up in the predawn hours to know that you have several more hours of teeth-clenchingly delicious sleep.

       This comfort is why people come back to this hotel, though there are others similar in the same neighborhoods. Go not two miles away and you can have all the familiarity that one can get out of a 5 star, international hotel. GO to that other hotel. You will not hear the laughter of the cooks in the kitchen, not know them all by name and chat with them daily. Sort red beans with them on the green countertop talking of nothing, nothing at all important, but enjoying the sound of the breeze and this opportunity: to do something so old and practiced and never-changing. Sharing time without having to sit silently doing nothing when you’ve run out of something to say for the moment.

        Jose will do what he can to make you happy. He will look into the problems you are having with the hot water system that you mentioned to his esposa. It’s not a huge problem, you tell her, but I got an electric shock when I tried to turn the water off. He doesn’t know how to fix it… Ah well. Turn the water on and off with a towel, you decide. Anything to take advantage of the hot water, though at this point you almost would rather not use it. It dries out the skin…

      He works during the day, mostly, and he tells you that he will until he dies, and his children, and their children and their children. You have no idea where he lives at night and realize that you have never been polite enough to ask. You wonder if his house looks anything at all like the hotel. If it is as clean, as modern. If the windows are as grand, for these are windows of a palace.

You’ve never heard him raise his voice.